Cherrypopins

As the title states, I was a previously a 2007 Civic SI owner. I recently traded the modified SI in for a 100% stock 2004 S2000 and was curious on which mods (if any) should I get after I get comfortable with the car (and less broke lol)? My SI had 410cc injectors, cold air, Tein coilovers, Skunk exhaust, just an overall fun car. My new S2000 only has 32k/miles and will be my daily for a little bit. Any mods recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Chuck S

No mods are necessary. Several recommendations for a new-to-you car will appear below. Getting a good maintenance baseline with fresh fluids, proper oil filter, valve adjustment, etc. will use up your car time for a while.

Good tires are the primary factor in good handling and if yours are more than 4 years old it's time for new ones. The car is sensitive to matching tires and pressures. I personally use Extreme or at least Max Performance summer tires. We all have favorite brands.

The rear drive handles different than a Civic and the primary mean of self-inflicted damage to the car seems to be spin-outs at innocent places like coming out of round-about/traffic-circles, freeway on-ramps, and having the car swap ends on road oil or wet roads. Mid-corner braking can be exciting until you learn the nuances.

Unless you supercharge the car there are only tiny gains to be made and ill-advised mods (like removing the airbox cover) result in lower performance.

-- Chuck

Hfreak

Are you looking for performance mods or visual mods? There are plenty either way but research is key on both. Welcome aboard!

spaded.racer

Gas, Tires, maintenance items....

After all that a Hi-flow Cat/Test pipe and a tune are the best bang for the buck.

CMK

For an '04 a tune will be pretty pricey, as it involves a standalone.

spaded.racer

Nah, you can get decent results with a GReddy E-Manage. Look into Karcepts as he can get you up and running pretty quickly.

Manga_Spawn

Get to know the car first but the one thing I would recommend doing early is a nice heavy weighted countersunk shift knob. It makes the already good transmission that much better. Beyond that making sure things like the tires and all the maintenance are in tip top shape should be the primary focus.

Car Analogy

Tbere is a sticky thread on stuff for nrw owners to do and to check. Find it, follow it.

Then just drive the car. Its amazing even in stock form. Then later decide what areas are priority for your needs, and mod in that direction (or don't. Like has been said, amazing cars even in stock form).

Spend some time really learning rwd. This car is a perfect storm of:

An environment of experienced enthusiast drivers many of whom have never even driven a rwd performance car

Many of these drivers owned, and loved, Honda products.

Honda introduces an extreme sportscar with strong appeal to the Sport Compact crowd. Rwd. Raw. Exceedingly nuetral (polar opposite of fwd handling).

Overconfident, experienced yet unprepared drivers proceed to crash them backwards into curbs and ditches at an alarming rate.

Its kinda like peope got setup to fail.

So work up to it. Learn the car. Learn rwd. Learn decreasing radius throttle lift induced oversteer (and how to avoid it).

Then worry about modding the car.

Chuck S

Yep learn the car before throwing money it. Thread running this morning regarding buying an engine from a salvaged S2000. Carfax on the car the engine came out of shows the car was purchased (used) last fall and wrecked (and salvaged) less than 200 miles later. An accomplished driver buddy of mine put his new-to-him S2000 "in the cattails" (as he described it) in the local metro-parks on a clear, sunny afternoon. Crappy tires didn't help but it happened nonetheless. Pressure wash under the car and a change of underwear fix this one though.

-- Chuck

sam_spider

Get an Invidia exhaust